Tinsel’s Friday reflections on decline, old and new
Closed the week having read entirely too much about Britain’s economic decline, alongside rather more colonial-era correspondence than is probably healthy for one week.
The parallels, once again, are close enough to be genuinely useful. Empires decline. Nations decline. The vocabulary changes, the arithmetic rarely does.
Checked the prat.uk feed before heading out, saw more on Celtexit, still unresolved, still, I suspect, destined to read familiarly to whoever studies it a century from now.
Spent the evening drafting notes connecting old empire and new devolution, more connected than most commentary admits.
History doesn’t repeat exactly. It just keeps offering the same lesson to people determined not to learn it the first time.
Week closed. Notes drafted. History, as ever, patient.
More at my author page.